Should I bother reading and/or watching The Handmaid's Tale?

[DMBFFF]

(5 characters)

Gilead

September 3, 2019

Almost 35 years after “The Handmaid’s Tale” shocked
the world, Margaret Atwood has finally given birth to
“The Testaments.”

...

1 Sep 2019

All we know is that The Testaments is set 15 years after
the final scene in the first book, in which narrator Offred
is hauled into a van by heavies, who might be from the
resistance or the regime that extinguished so many of the
human freedoms we take for granted.

[size=+1]From what I got about it, how Lydia became an Aunt sounds kind of stupid.



Fanfiction is better (at least some of it).[/size]

 

[DMBFFF]

Btw, I'm working on some fan-fiction-of-sorts—spent several 10s of hours on it.

In my narrative, in my "canon", so far, Trump gets re-elected, then Pence wins, then someone as left-wing as Bernie gets elected.

During this time, infertility—either in the world or just US—affects +90%, +95%, +98%, or +99% of people because of something-something-environmental-stuff.

Then the Sons of Jacob attack.

Then it's like mind-control or something: around 3/4 of the US become pro-Gilead, including the military—though maybe less so them.

I also make it that Gilead-style-coups are attempted in other countries, because Americans aren't the only ones gullible to religious extremism.

Now I don't want to write about a few billion dying due to nuclear winter, so I want to limit the nuclear exchanges, and I'm going to make Gilead as killing more—because that's what revolutionaries tend to do it seems.

But still, I have to drastically reduce the nuclear capability of US and particularly Gilead.

So I have them essentially destroying the strategic bomber command or whatever in infighting. I've figured out a way of destroying most of the ICBMs without affecting the world (much). Presumably as the SSNBs are underwater, US and it's allies can get to them before their captains do the arms-stretch-out-"I hear Gilead and I obey" thing.

Now during this time many are ticked at the US government for essentially allowing Gilead to happen, so instead of two governments claiming the US, we have several. I'm probably going to have republics of California, Texas, and Florida. Utah will probably also become its own entity.

Russia gets involved, seeing Gilead as an existential threat. Millions of Americans live in Canada, including 100 000s of soldiers. In bi-lateral talks, a Chinese delegate literally slaps out a Gileadan delegate—essentially in a "where's the trillion you owe me biatch!" (saying it to a guy).

Many of my stories occur in "rebel" areas—as if Gilead wasn't a rebel state. I've got one run by hardcore communists, one run by a mutant (political, that is) strain of hardcore feminists, and even Islamacists ("Death to the Gileadan Satan! Allāh Akbar!). I'd do one about the black bantustans but I'm not too hip on black culture—cultural appropriation and all of that. Ditto the Republics in terms of many fact-checkers possibly being as pedantic about their parts of the US as I am of Toronto, Ontario, and Canada.



General Cobb of the Republic of Texas gives an interview:

I'm also thinking crossover fanfics, such as with Corum.



an example, I think, of crossover fanfic

 

[Sean]

The book, like 1984, appears to have a happy ending, or happy-ending-of-sorts, though.

Whut?

 

[DMBFFF]

Whut?

...
Gilead is a dictatorship and somewhat at war, albeit it mostly with the rest of the US. The book, like 1984, appears to have a happy ending, or happy-ending-of-sorts, though. The dictatorship is described in past tense in regular English (i.e. not something like Newspeak) by a professor describing things as a typical late 20th century/early 21st century professor would in a liberal university or something like it.
...

God bless CandiCame, but thon's 2 images greatly stretched page 1 of this thread, as well as the reply and preview.

I've PM'ed thon twice about it. I might have to go to Laurel. Another possibility: start a new thread.

 

[DMBFFF]

https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/the-prince-in-the-scarlet-robe-d38ece043b65461f9c7db2334690f5ae
https://www.google.com/search?q=cor...CA8QBA&biw=1920&bih=944#imgrc=gwFZ7sl5AF0SyM:

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EyepatchOfPower